Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.—Mary Oliver, Am I Not Among the Early Risers
Here is my amazement
I keep thinking about that line: and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.
Not that everything is the same. Of course it isn’t.
My body isn’t twenty. I’ve accumulated scars and losses, people I love, work I’m proud of and work I’d rather forget. I’ve been a daughter, sister, wife, mother, writer, friend. I’ve gotten things wrong. Changed my mind. Started over. Tried again.
I understand Oliver’s amazement because the world can still stop me.
A cardinal singing in the tree. Ice cream melting in the sun. Sunflower fields. A black swan on the creek. Dragonflies hovering nearby. Typewriter keys that go thunk. Light and shadow. The happiest song in the world playing at exactly the right moment.
School concerts I once sat through without knowing how quickly they would disappear. Ordinary moments I didn’t know would become memories.
Maybe that’s what surprises me most about turning sixty. I haven’t grown tired of noticing.
If anything, I want to notice more.
What I know now that I didn’t know at twenty
Not as much as I thought I would.
I imagined age might bring certainty. Instead, it has given me a better ability to distinguish what matters from what doesn’t.
Clarity over confidence.
I know that patience comes with practice. So does courage. So does forgiveness. Some days I’m better at them than others. Some days I’m hopeless.
I know joy doesn’t require everything else to be okay.
And I know that paying attention is one way of loving a life while you’re living it.
What practice taught me
Writing. Yoga. Tennis. Motherhood. Work.
None of them turned out to be about mastery.
They’re about returning.
Return to the page.
Return to the breath.
Return the ball.
Return to the people you love after you’ve disappointed each other.
Return to the work and try again.
Maybe that’s why I am still writing, still playing tennis, still unrolling the yoga mat, still filling notebooks, still reading poetry and looking for words that might help me understand something I haven’t quite been able to name.
I used to think practice was what you did in preparation for the real thing.
Now I think practice is the thing.
What comes next
Bow down.
Not in defeat.
In awe.
Because the same stars are there. The same green earth. The same tragedies and foolishness. The same inexplicable good fortune.
And somehow, after sixty years, I am still here to notice it.
But I know I won’t always be here to notice it.
I don’t find that knowledge particularly frightening. At least not today. It makes the life in front of me feel more immediate.
The rabbit outside the window.
The next page.
The next serve.
The people I love.
Whatever ordinary moment is happening while I’m busy waiting for something important to happen.
Maybe sixty isn’t the moment I finally figure out how to live.
Maybe it’s the moment I look backward and realize:
My life is the practice.
What Theo of Golden Taught Me About Paying Attention